Guide to Mission Driven Filmmaking

By Filmmakers Collaborative SF

Mission-driven filmmaking refers to a strategic approach to visual storytelling that uses an organization’s core mission as the foundation and focus of its external and internal communications. Philosophically, it is based on the organization’s desire to promote the purpose, aim, and goals of the organization, as outlined in its mission - and to communicate the benefits of achieving those goals to its stakeholders.

Videos have become an essential tool to visually communicate an organization’s mission to increase the impact of the work they are doing. Videos that take into consideration a few key principles can be valuable assets to reach strategic audiences, get traction with messaging, and help move viewers from engagement to action. It is an opportunity to show how you are creating positive change in the world and to get more people on board to join you in your mission!

We have outlined the elements we think are critical to planning your mission-driven video campaign:

Goals

What are your goals with this campaign?

Think about:

Short term and long term goals.
How you would prioritize your goals.
What you are hoping to achieve with this video.

How this video fits into the organization’s larger mission.

Audience

Who is your core audience?

Think about:

How your audience can be stratified.
Primary and secondary audiences.
How you can test to see if your assumptions about the audience are accurate.
What partners could help you reach this audience.
How you can reach these audiences by distributing the video through different platforms.

Identifying a primary audience will allow you to be more strategic about the messaging, creative approach, and other factors. The audience will help shape the video itself, as well as the distribution strategy for the video. How might you reverse engineer the approach to the film with audience and distribution in mind?

Messaging

What will be the key messages communicated through the campaign?

Think about:

How you can convey this message in the simplest terms.
How the messaging connects with the mission of the organization.
How this message can be shared in a way that compels the audience.
If you are creating multiple videos, how you can make an overarching message that clearly connects the videos.

Video Parameters

A short form and long form web video on the same topic would require very different approaches. With the increase of different ways of sharing video, you could do anything from a 30 second video to a 30 minute video (or even longer or shorter).

Think about:

If your campaign will include one video or multiple videos.
Video length and whether you want multiple versions to distribute on different platforms.
If this structure makes sense to achieve your goals and successfully share your message. How confident are you that your target audience will watch the whole video?

The Content

What are you showing in the video? Will the story resonate with your core audience and engage them?

Think about:

Bringing the human side to this story. Choose subjects who will create that connection for the viewer.
Balancing information and aesthetics. Videos that have nonstop information are hard for the viewer to process. Avoid making a video essay. Let the video do what videos do best, which is visual storytelling to touch viewers emotionally - laugh, cry, yell - all the while feeling your message not just learning about it.
How you will get the footage - Do you have existing footage? Do you have partners who can help provide footage? Will you need to go to multiple locations to shoot or have multiple shoot dates?
Feasibility with your budget. What’s a “must have” and what’s a “nice to have”?
What other logistics may play a part in planning the production.
Keep the story short and sweet! Videos are often too long!

Call to action

What action do you want viewers to take after watching?

Think about:

Ideally, what do you want viewers to do after watching the film?
How viewers can get more information.
Listing specific action items viewers can take.
What you can do to turn engagement into action.

Distribution

Making a great film is not enough. Every film needs to build a critical amount of awareness to succeed. A great video without a thoughtful approach to distribution will stop you from achieving the results that your work deserves! This is arguably the number one reason films fall short - the absence of an appropriate distribution strategy!

Think about:

What is your strategy to reach viewers and how you will achieve it.
How to reach the audiences you identified. Where are they finding their relevant content?
What potential partners can help you reach and distribute to your audience.
What platforms are appropriate for the content and length of your videos.
How you can get viewer traction once they are posted. Who can you count on to share the video and draw in their following? How can this be replicated to maximize interest?
Capturing emails and information from the beginning of the project so you can create a project list.

Evaluation

How will you measure the success of your campaign?

Think about:

Metrics to track. Of course, there’s the view count but don’t just stop there! You can also look at comments, shares, increase in followers/members, website traffic, etc.
How to evaluate your call to action. If you pointed people to a website, did your viewers follow through with that? Did the video serve as a jumping off point for people to engage further with your organization?
Your goals, audience, and messaging. Were you successful with the goals you set out to achieve? Did you reach the audience you were intending? Was your message effectively communicated?

We hope you found this guide useful! If you would like to get in touch about Filmmakers Collaborative SF’s production and consulting services, shoot us an email: info@filmmakerscollaborative.org